This is us.

We are an American family of four who have decided to pack up all of our things, rent a storage unit, and remove our 4 and 8 year olds from school to travel the world. We not only want to show our kids the world outside of Portland, OR, we want to immerse them in it. We are not experienced in this type of adventure so following us on this blog should hopefully provide you with inspiration to do something similar, or if nothing else, a good laugh as we work out the travel kinks.

Our story

We grew up in Portland, OR, met each other at work here, and the rest is history as they say. Well actually, there’s quite a bit of history there, as I am sure every family and partners have after 14 years together. After 4 years of “dating” we decided to move to Las Vegas for Tim’s job. We eloped in 2007 in Lake Tahoe (I mean come on, you can’t elope in Las Vegas if you live there, right?). Paige was born in Las Vegas in 2009 and the clock was ticking for us to get out of there. We moved back to Portland in 2010 and Tim started a digital marketing agency (AudienceWise). In 2013 Tim started to work for Moz, a Seattle-based software company. This time however our roots were set in Portland and we weren’t moving. We made it work, but there were of course trade-offs. Tim travelled up to Seattle every other week and shortly after he started Parker was born. After 4 years, the gig was up and we were working on starting a website/app that helped parents do fun things with their kids in their cities. Weehop was born and the work, vision, and process of building weehop from the ground up is what eventually led us to decide to pack it all up and hit the road like a bunch of nomads.

As paradoxical as it may be, this trip is the simultaneous culmination of long-term planning and spontaneity. We initially talked about doing a year around the world with our future family when we honeymooned in Patagonia (that’s when Alyssa caught the travel bug) and for the last 10 years we have been talking/day dreaming about doing it. The actual decision to go felt as if it struck quicker than lightening and was made in under 3 minutes. So here we are. It’s time to plan, pack, plan some more, go and go some more. We hope that you will join us for the adventure!

The weehop mission

The mission of weehop has always been to inspire, encourage, and enable parents to experience the real world with their kids. The product and execution of weehop has changed, but the mission has not.

We consider ourselves a lot like everyone else. We are not wealthy, we are not jet-setters, in fact, we don’t really know what we are doing in the area of long-term travel. We are just trying to blow our kids’ minds and see a little of the world ourselves while we are at it. We hope to capture our experiences, emotions, thinking process, and the kids’ points of view as we go so that others who are just normal folks and not wealthy jet-setters can experience the ups and downs with us and maybe take a small or big hop themselves one day.

It’s Oprah’s fault

Damn you Oprah. Most of us probably remember the infamous Oprah episodes like Tom Cruise going batsh*t crazy on a couch or Dr. Oz talking about what shape your poop should be. S-shaped if you’re curious.

Ok, we’re doing this. Now What?

Here is the brain vomit that comes 96 hours after making the potentially nutso decision to travel the world for a year with your 4 and 8 year old in tow. What did I forget? Bring on the comments and suggestions. We’re all in!

Why not now? My train of thought.

I can tell you one thing: my first thought after getting laid off this summer WASN’T: “hey, now that Alyssa and I both are unemployed and have no income let’s pack up our 4 and 8 year old and travel the world.”

Reactions from our squad

Although we’re waiting to officially tell everyone in mid-March about our Round The World travel plans (RTW as the online travel enthusiasts call it, who knew!), we did have to tell members of our inner circle that would be impacted.

Predictions: March 2017

What are my predictions and expectations for this trip? Holy loaded question Batman. These are turning out to be very unavoidable concepts as we plan this trip. Will I like my family more or less after this trip?

FAQ 2: Cash Money

I’ll just cut to the chase. This is probably the most frequently UNASKED question most people want to ask us but don’t. We’ve had a few brave souls go there but not many. So, we’ll explain our thinking below.